Monster magazine listings

[skully]

Hey guys.  Need to know if I'm being overly critical with this or if it's a real concern.  Every once in a while I'll see this sort of thing on e-bay and it just makes me cringe.  First, a true story about this.  Many years ago a comic book and toy dealer from the area had great success in obtaining some real nice early issues of Famous Monsters,  seems as though word got out that he was a major buyer for these and he got quite a few tucked away collections from the area,  some of these issues never saw the light of day since they were bought.  He once bought a whole stack of early issues that were just outstanding condition wise.    Among the issues was a near mint FM # 4 with the Ghouls eye sticker,  as new as the day it was bought.   I don't think it was ever read.   Anyway,  I always bugged him about buying the issue, along with many others from this collection.   He would never budge,  and he knew I wanted it badly.               The key takeaway with this is the fact that the spine on this issue was fully intact,  no splitting or flaking of any sort,  like it was never even opened.   So,  about a year later he finally caved and we hammered out a deal for almost the whole collection.  However,  he wanted to play a joke on me with the issue # 4.   He told one of his workers to take the issue to a local photo shop with a scanner printer.  All this happened without me knowing because I told him I'd be back in a week to purchase.   Well,  either the worker or printer shop owner took the magazine and opened it wide for both covers to be copied on the large printer glass.        About 10 copies were printed, and yes,  when the magazine was opened like that,  the spine slightly flaked from bottom to the top.  When I came back to make the purchase,  he brought out these 10 copies and made a story about buying all of them from the same collection.   He then proceeded to rip them up in front of me as if he didn't care.  I forced out a small laugh,  but it wasn't very funny,  I already knew what had happened.   I looked at the original magazine and saw what happened to the spine.  I never mentioned anything about it because I still wanted to buy the lot.   So,  with all this being said,  am I being overly critical when I see an e-bay listing for an early FM issue (before the square type binding) opened up all the way to show a few interior pages while thinking that the spine is being damaged by doing this because the person might not realize just how delicate some of these issues really are?                                                                                                                                                                                 

[Sir Masksalot]

It would be an effort on my part to excuse such negligence for the sake of a mocking joke. Years ago, I spent an afternoon
carefully arranging vintage monster magazines in a library showcase and a passerby thought it would be funny to jump in
and pretend to be part of the exhibit. She trampled and creased several vintage FMs while doing so. "You wanna be under
glass, sweetheart? I can arrange that, too!"

[skully]

Hi Sir Masksalot.  Damn,  that's quite a horror story too!  When the #4 copies were made, it was only the front and back cover,  they were then stapled to generic magazines.  After your incident,  was anything done about it?  I could go a bit further, and you would be a good person to ask,  with all this covid stuff going on now,  how do you feel about people actually wearing the mask that they're trying to sell on e-bay?

[Mike Scott]

how do you feel about people actually wearing the mask that they're trying to sell on e-bay?

Don't wear it for a while. A Google search will tell you how long the virus lives.

[Sir Masksalot]

Yes, I've heard that viruses can only survive a limited time on inorganic surfaces.

[Mike Scott]

Yes, I've heard that viruses can only survive a limited time on inorganic surfaces.

Google says a few days, at most.